


Wreck Before Ruin

by JustAGirlCalledMe



Series: Ruin (Fairy Tail Zombie Apocalypse) [1]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Blood and Violence, Future NaLu, Gen, Heavy Angst, Orphanage, Prologue, Two Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-05 07:38:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18824140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAGirlCalledMe/pseuds/JustAGirlCalledMe
Summary: The day the apocalypse began was ordinary, for the most part. No hint to the oncoming calamity was given. But then, heroes hardly ever receive warning when their world is about to end. And now life goes on. | Prequel to Ruin





	1. Natsu's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natsu's story begins in Magnolia in the pouring rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a kind of "prologue" to a story I have in the making: Ruin, a Fairy Tail Zombie Apocalypse. I wanted to post this to judge peoples' interest in this kind of thing. The story takes place about a year after the events of the prologue, and commences with Natsu and Lucy meeting for the first time. But, yeah, with that explanation out of the way, enjoy the prologue, Wreck Before Ruin.

The most life changing days in stories are always raining days. Must be a thing the universe decided; no climactic events can take place unless a storm is coming, to increase the drama.

That day was no exception. Out of nowhere, this absolute killer of a storm rolled over Magnolia and started bucketing down rain, throwing in some lightning strikes in the distance for good measure. School let the kids stay inside during lunch break. There were a few that ran around in the rain and got soaked to the bone, and they got scolded by the teachers later. Throughout the day the rain didn’t let up, and it was still pelting when school ended.

Of course, what that meant for me is that I would be walking home in the rain. I get very bad motion sickness, see, so I try to avoid vehicular transport as much as possible. More often than not I have company. Wendy and Gajeel suffer motion sickness just as bad as me (maybe a side effect of growing up in the countryside without cars?) and Alice likes walking home with Wendy. That day, Renee was also walking with us. Apparently, she was arguing with Miku and didn’t want to be around her. That was fair enough to us.

It’s funny, I can remember exactly what we were talking about on that walk home. Alice and Wendy were walking a few feet ahead of us, talking about some project they had. They were in the same class but different groups, I think. I didn’t pay much attention to their conversation. Gajeel and I were trying to distract Renee from her fight with Miku. Mostly I just made a bunch of stupid jokes, and Gajeel teased her about some guy he knew she liked. I wasn’t allowed to know who that was.

We didn’t know that anything was wrong until we found the crash.

What jumped us all into action was the bus number. Otherwise we might’ve stayed staring forever. The screaming around us was mind numbing and the scene too shocking to grasp, but that number meant something. It meant the others were on that bus.

Now, I’m not any kind of accident investigations expert, but I had seen a few of those shitty cop shows where they reconstruct collisions and stuff, before they stopped streaming TV. We could see right away that the bus had swerved to avoid something. Served right into the side of a building. It had probably lost traction on the wet road.

The front of bus had crunched like an aluminium can, the classic yellow paint stripped away to reveal the metal frame of the bus underneath. One of the wheels was almost falling off. So was a lot of the front of the bus. Most worryingly of all, oil leaked everywhere. The crash must have punctured the fuel tank, and now the bus was an explosion waiting to happen.

Gajeel and I made the girls stay back. Truth be told, I didn’t even want to go near it. I was scared (you’ll never hear me admit that out loud though). Sure, the bus might have been about to blow up, but what if what we found inside was a sight we couldn’t bear to see? My family took that bus! I’m proud to say I braved the fear anyway.

Thankfully, we didn’t find the others in the bus. Actually, we didn’t find anyone in the bus; everyone was gone. A few of the windows had been smashed outwards. Glass shards scattered on the road had bold, red writing on some of them; one of those “in emergency break glass with hammer” signs. The hammer was laying close by. So were a few drops of blood.

It was terrifying. It was raining. It was about to get worse. So, we headed home.

Yeah, yeah, you might think that if we saw the beginning of the apocalypse unfold, surely our next move was to race to a grocery store or a hardware store, or somewhere logical to get supplies. But listen here: we were a group of three teenagers and two kids who had no idea what was going on. Of course home was our solution. Home was safe; it always had been.

If only we’d left right away.

Gajeel tells me not to blame myself, but I know he does the same. Hypocrite.

We stood there arguing for too long. He wanted to go straight back to the orphanage, and I wanted to stick around and search for the others. It made sense that the others would go straight back, but … I was just so scared of losing someone. I wanted to make sure.

We should’ve checked the bus twice.

That was the first time we saw one; crawling out from the windscreen of the bus. It dragged itself like its legs had been crushed. Glass was embedded in its palms and chest, drawing lines of blood as it scraped its torso against the remnants of the window. A shallow indent in its skull suggested that maybe the bus driver died on impact, smashing his head on the dash. Had he been wearing a seatbelt? Did the airbags not deploy? Didn’t matter in the end.

Wendy screamed. Alice looked like she wanted to, but her face was stuck in a permanent gasp of terror, rain catching in her mouth. This thing crawled out onto the hood of the bus and tumbled to the pavement. When it looked our way, I thought I would be sick.

I wish it had no eyes. It would’ve been better if it had no eyes. Instead, the pupils on its face were glossed over, like a blind man’s, but somehow, they were sunken and empty at the same time. I did meet a blind man once, on a school trip. Some old veteran that lost his sight due to head trauma. Somehow that old guy saw without seeing in a way that brightened the hazy sheen of his eyes and filled him with a sense of liveliness. The monster had none of that.

It didn’t move like something alive; didn’t seem to recognise that its muscles moved in certain ways or that it could manipulate its limbs as it wanted to. But it creepily stumbled to its feet and started shuffling towards us, groaning all the while. Like it wanted to talk, or maybe scream.

I wanted to move. I wanted to run. But I couldn’t; for the first time ever, it felt like I was frozen in absolute fear.

Renee made a choice. Erza always says that. She made the hard choice that we couldn’t.

Out of nowhere, the brave, confident, loveable Renee came charging forward with the little hammer from the bus. She sprinted right up to the monster and swung at its head. It crumpled without much force. Like a baby still finding its legs, it got back up though. Renee kept swinging, beating at it. She yelled, but she didn’t seem afraid. I was just … in awe.

And then it decided to stay down. It took a chunk out of her calf. Renee fell, and the monster took its chance. I will never forget her last words.

‘Tell Miku I love her.’

If I take any relief, it's that she died quickly. Once the monster downed her, it tore straight through her throat. Skin and muscle tissue ripped away as bloody human teeth gorged on the dark flesh of her neck, stealing any other words and any breath away in one bite. Ignoring us, it feasted on Renee.

Alice threw up then. I can’t blame her. I know I forced down bile at least twice that day.

We ran after that. I’m sort of ashamed to admit it. Gajeel and I did go back for Renee about a week later and brought back what was left. I nearly threw up then too.

After making it about a block, Wendy was crying too hard to take another step. Gajeel was already dragging Alice by the hand, so I scooped Wendy up and cradled her to my chest like a child. She was a child. We all were.

It was harder carrying Wendy, but we made it as far as the park just around the corner from the orphanage before we were jumped again.

This one we didn’t see until it was too late. The monster was standing behind a street pole, must’ve been watching us as we ran by. Maybe it was because we were moving slow. But it was probably because we were too shell shocked from Renee to think. Gajeel says he never realised when she slipped from his hand.

Alice’s scream alerted us. Thrashing and pinned underneath another kid that was probably double her size, and it began to tear away parts of her stomach with its teeth. I had never seen so much blood before. It ran down her chest and sides like red rivers from hell.

Gajeel jumped into action and kicked it off Alice. Before it could regain any kind of zombie composure, he was smashing its skull into the sidewalk under his boot. He didn’t stop stomping under it stopped moving, and then some. He will never admit to crying that day.

It was still too late. Alice’s face stopped shaking with tears still tracing down her cheeks, and absolute horror and pain in her eyes. There was no way she could be patched up. A massive chunk had been taken from her side, blood still spilling like the life leaving her.

Gajeel and I went back later for Alice too.

Wendy cried even harder after that. In my arms she struggled and kicked, and tried to get to Alice, but I didn’t put her down. I started moving, trying to turn her head away from the gruesome scene behind us. All the way back home, she cried. I held her tight as I could. I wouldn’t let Gajeel take her, even if it meant I was struggling to run, and I was. I couldn’t save Renee and I couldn’t save Alice. I _would_ protect Wendy.

As it turned out, Renee and Alice weren’t the only ones we lost that day. And they weren’t the last ones we would lose either.

Miku spent the entire night screaming in the downstairs bathroom in Cana’s arms. We all lost a friend, but those two lost someone special. They’d lost a true sister. I didn’t go and check on them, and I don’t think anyone else did either. They both had the right to be alone.

That day was a turning point in all our lives. It was a turning point for all of Ishgar. The news stations didn’t last for long, but we did know that the phenomenon had moved as far as Minstrel before we lost connection.

So many fled Magnolia. To where, I have no idea. Perhaps an island off the coast, or a military camp that we’d heard the news advocating.

We couldn’t leave though. How could we? We had children - barely older than toddlers - that wouldn’t be able to keep up if we went on the run. So, we stayed, and we made a new life. With everyone leaving town, the population of monsters decreased. The ones that remained, we wiped out. We cleared region after region of Magnolia. We survived.

There will come a time when Magnolia is no longer safe, and we will have to flee the only home we’ve ever known. But then again, there is no safe anymore, only _safer_. Right now, we have everything we need to survive at Fairy Tail. We stick together, we work together, we fight together. We have each other’s backs.

I don’t remember much from the beginning, but I do remember that first night. No one slept. A few of the girls had a “slumber party” in the TV room with the little ones, fostering a gentle environment to calm things down. It didn’t really work. Miku’s wails travelled up the stairs and through the halls, and the twins were restless, keeping us all up as if the horrors of the day weren’t already doing that.

I spent most of that night looking at the stars (Gray would call me some choice names for that, I’m sure). Mostly I wanted to remind myself that the things I knew before the world ended were still real, because when your life plummets straight to hell you start questioning everything you’ve ever learned or been told. Stars were constant, at least. They weren’t going anywhere.

Outside was dark, darker somehow than a normal night. It made the stars difficult to see, but I made do. The humidity dragged through the air. And somehow, through the insanity of the living dead and the impossibility of losing our family, it was still raining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh BOY, I have not written in first person in a long time and it SHOWS. My apologies, the main story is all in third person, which I can write in significantly better.


	2. Lucy's Tale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy’s story begins in Celandine under the burning sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've read this before, you might realise that mentions of Loke have been replaced with Virgo. This is because I am a dumbass who forgot she wrot Loke in somewhere else already.

It was strangely sunny that day. Not a cloud in the sky. As opposed to the drudging rain that had plagued the area for the last week or so. The juxtaposition was cruel in retrospect, as though the pleasant weather was mocking the horrific disasters that were to follow.

Everything was normal up until about 2.45pm on the 17th of January. I was in the middle of a history class, studying the origins of the Forty-Year War. It was usually one of my favourite subjects, but the call of the delightful day beyond the window was irresistible. How could I be sure the nice weather was going to last? I was extremely impatient for class to end at three o’clock.

At exactly a quarter to three, Miss Spetto came rushing in to interrupt the lesson looking terrified and frantic. She told me we were leaving; said my father was waiting for me at his office in Celandine. I knew something was up then. My father never needed to see me unless something important was happening or I had done something wrong, and I was pretty sure I’d steered clear of trouble recently.

Capricorn had a car ready. Not a limo like I was used to being paraded around in but a regular looking hatchback. It was some new model of a lower-class brand. Dull blue with four doors, and inconspicuous, for sure. I was very nervous then.

No one would tell me anything. No one would give me a straight answer.

Outside the car, the windows were so heavily tinted I couldn’t see in at all. Inside the car wasn’t much better. Although the plush setting of the seats and upgraded interior were along my familiar lines, the duffel bag on the back seat stuffed full of canned food, water bottles, changes of clothes for both myself and my father, and a GLOCK 19 threw me off. Panic started setting in.

Spetto pushed me in the back of the car and shut the door. I didn’t realise then that she wasn't coming with me, and I wonder if things would’ve ended differently if I had insisted that she did.

Instead it was Virgo that joined me on the trip to my father’s office. Despite being a little less tight lipped and a little more sympathetic towards me, she didn’t give me much information either.

I asked about what was happening. I think I yelled a lot. Virgo took all my abuse without so much as a grain of salt. She told me something had happened in the city, and that we were going to my father’s office to be put on lockdown until it all blew over. I remember thinking it must’ve been serious if it had Virgo shook.

The food and water were supposed to be extra resources since the office didn’t really keep a lot there. The clothes were for comfort. The GLOCK 19 was for protection.

I think the pistol is what freaked me out the most. Supplies could be for any situation, like an earthquake or tsunami or a typhoon - although we hadn’t had any disaster warnings - whereas a pistol meant something dangerous and _alive_. A serial killer, maybe? Or escaped animals?

I threw all these suggestions at Virgo and she bounced every one of them off with a grimace. I could tell she was trying to be strong for my sake, but all it did was worry me more. Virgo was as fearless as they come. But whatever was out there obviously scared her.

Sirens blared throughout Celandine. Smoke rose from a distant blaze. More than once an ambulance rushed past us, and halfway to the office we had to pull over to let a police car through.

Now, at this point my anxiety was through the roof. And you really couldn’t blame me.

A lot of people were running around, and the drive was tough just because of the ruckus on the roads. The emergency services were hectic. It seemed like the city was in full panic mode and I didn’t know why. Virgo dodged every question by chanting, ‘We’re almost there,’ every time I asked.

We were almost there. But we never got there.

A red car - I don’t remember what kind, just that it was small - came screaming through a T-intersection at speeds way over that of the legal limit. I watched it come at us. It was rather like a dream, everything moving in slow motion as I realised what was about to happen seconds before it did. Virgo yelled just before impact.

Our car went spinning, literally. The force from the hatchback careened our car onto its side, and then it's roof, and then the other side and then the roof again. I lost count of how many times we rolled. My body smacked into everything: the car door, the seat in front of me, Virgo beside me.

I blacked out. I’m not sure when I came to. We were right side up, but there was a lot of smoke and I could smell blood. I realise now it was probably mine.

It's weird how the human brain remembers things. Before the crash, my memory is fuzzy, as though things weren’t worth remembering. But the smell of blood, the feel of glass, the beat of my heart, the shock of the scene; they’re little things that have stuck with me all this time.

Virgo was passed out in the seat beside me, the crown of her head drenched so thick with blood that it dyed her rosey locks so violently red. I couldn’t see Capricorn. I’m not sure which of them I was more worried about.

Actually, I do. And that might be worse.

The car door was so badly damaged that I had to kick out the window and squirm free. I cut myself all over. My dress ripped in so many places. Once I made it out and I was checking myself over I finally saw it; a thick glass shard embedded deep in the back of my forearm. Only when I noticed did the sensation hit.

Hot, thick pain ran the length of the incision. It burned worse than anything else I’ve ever felt before, like someone had dragged a heated knife down my arm. I remember feeling quite faint (I might’ve thrown up by the side of the car, but I guess we'll never know).

Thinking quickly - if I do say so myself - I managed to tug the duffel bag from the back seat and unzip it. Finding a shirt of enough thickness, I tore off strips of the back with my teeth (if the shirt happened to be one of my father’s most expensive button-downs, then what can I say). Then came the fun bit. Treat it like a Band-Aid, I decided. Not the greatest decision of my life, I’ll admit. I grabbed the largest edge of the glass shard and pulled.

You know how I said the pain burned worse than anything I’ve ever felt before? I take that back. _This_ hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before. I could feel the slickness of the glass move past my skin. Fire seared along the laceration. I stuffed the rest of my father’s shirt in my mouth to keep from screaming aloud.

Finally, the glass was gone, and I started wrapping the strips of shirt around my arm with difficulty. It probably needed stitches. I didn’t have time for that though.

As soon as I wasn’t blinded by scorching pain, I got to working the car door open. The door on my side wouldn’t give, so I moved around to Virgo's side with greater success. With a good tug, it came free.

Virgo was still out cold on the back seat, blood trickling from her bangs and down the side of her face. I took off her seatbelt and, mindful of my bad arm, swung her arm around my shoulders and dragged her from the crash. I lay her down on the side of the road where Capricorn was passed out. It looked as though the chauffeur had clambered from the car after impact but didn’t make it very far before being overcome by blood loss. I turned Capricorn onto his back and checked a gash in his chest; not fatal, but bleeding heavily. I tried stopping the flow with the rest of my father’s shirt.

After that I just … collapsed, on the side of the road. I was exhausted, confused and in pain.

I don’t think anyone noticed our crash. Down the road, a similar collision involving at least three cars had clearly taken up both sides of the road. I couldn’t see any people though. Sirens screamed from every direction, a vexing harmony of emergency service vehicles trying to aid everyone at once through this crisis. Surely it wouldn’t be long until one of them came across us.

I … I did something really selfish then.

Virgo and Capricorn were breathing fine; I checked their pulses and the worst of their injuries. Now, for the first time, there was no one watching me. I could just … disappear. And no one would ever know what happened or where I went.

My decision haunts me every day since.

The duffel bag was still there, lying open on the opposite side of the car. I barely stopped to think for a second before I tugged off my ridiculous pair of ballet flats and shoved them in. Then, hauling it over my good shoulder, I turned, and I ran.

I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t have a plan. I just wanted to go so far that my father would never find me. If this disaster was as dangerous as everyone was making it out to be, then he wasn’t going to show his face until it was over, not even to search for his missing daughter and her two butlers. That meant that time was ticking if I wanted to leave.

It was 5.27pm when I checked my phone in a playground in the north of Celandine. It was the farthest area from my father’s offices and the area most unfamiliar to me. A newly built jungle gym towered over ten feet high, splashed with brilliant blues, glowing greens and radiant reds. At that time of day, children should’ve been clambering all over it, but the park was bare of a single soul.

With a lot more struggle than I would rather admit, I climbed to the top of the jungle gym; a plastic house like structure with walls on two sides, a tunnel leading to a separate compartment on another, and the entrance to an enclosed spiral slide on the fourth. I made myself comfortable there.

Social media was a buzz. Grisly footage assaulted the internet with unforgiving details of attacks around the city and further throughout the country. Firsthand accounts of cannibalistic and macabre encounters were everywhere. But no one was supplying any explanations. Several suggestions were thrown around of viruses and curses and aliens. The government wasn’t saying anything. That probably scared more people.

I couldn’t believe it. _Zombies?_ Is that what this boiled down to?

After the sun went down, I changed out of my ripped dress and into some of the supplied clothes. I ripped up another one of my father’s shirts and rebandaged my arm. The blood soaked through just as quickly.

At some point, I had to turn my phone off. I told myself then it was to preserve battery, but I really couldn’t stand the news, and the stories, and the _images_.

I didn't sleep that night. I was too terrified.

So, yeah, on my first day of the apocalypse, I didn’t see a single monster. Lucky me, I know. I take heart in knowing Virgo and Capricorn were breathing when I left (abandoned) them. If I’d known back then just what this all was, I don’t think I could’ve left them.

But I had committed. In the morning, I shimmied down from my perch and set off on foot out of town. I wouldn’t always be on foot. Twice I found a car that took me for miles before running out of gas, although technically I didn’t have the license to drive. Once I joined a band of misfits that took me far south in the back of a removalist van. I was with them for a week before we were forced to part ways.

I don’t know what happened to Virgo and Capricorn. I don’t know what happened to Spetto and everyone else at the Heartfilia Mansion. I don’t know what happened to my father.

I anguish over the choice I made, but I don’t think I regret it.

My father had controlled me for too long. Despite the overwhelming sense of doom and the daunting dead lurking around every corner, I finally felt alive. I felt free.

That first morning when I set off on my own journey, the sun smiled on me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading this far! Please comment below if you would like to read the following story, because I'm working on its first arc at the moment. The story probably won't be out for a little while, but I am keen on getting some feedback, maybe some suggestions, thinks you'd like to see, etc. I originally started writing it because I really wanted to read a zombie apocalypse version of Fairy Tail, but I couldn't find a good one (i.e. one that meets my impossibly high standards of fanfic, sorry y'all). But I hope you enjoyed it!


	3. Ruin - Introduction

**_Ruin_ ** **by JustAGirlCalledMe, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, © 2019**

**Introduction**

▬▬●▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬●▬▬

Some would say the world had just ended, but for those left behind at Fairy Tail it was only just beginning. Overnight, zombies had become no longer works of fiction; they crawled right out of the pages of horror stories and into real life. There was panic, there was violence, and there was death.

Magnolia has practically been abandoned. Survivors of the first wave have long since fled, leaving the leftover zombie hoards and the inhabitants of the Fairy Tail Orphanage the only ones to remain. For these teenagers, life’s greatest challenges have gone from homework and love trouble to staying alive (and more love trouble). And if there’s one thing these kids aren’t good at, it's going down without a fight.

 

 **DISCLAIMER** : Characters, some locations and mentioned plotlines belong to Hiro Mashima. Heavy inspiration is drawn from zombie games and movies such as the Walking Dead, but the story contains no direct relation to any works of fiction except for Fairy Tail. The plotline of this story belongs to myself, JustAGirlCalledMe.

 **AN** : This only exists because I really wanted to read a Fairy Tail x zombie apocalypse story, but I couldn’t find a good one. As the saying goes “write the book you want to read”. By the way, this will include major character death and graphic depictions of violence - it is a _zombie_ story.


End file.
